TURKISH-ARMENIAN JOURNALIST INDICTED AGAIN
Agence France Presse — English
September 25, 2006 Monday 4:52 PM GMT
An Istanbul court has indicted Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink for "denigrating the Turkish national identity" by calling the
1915-17 massacres of Armenians a "genocide", his lawyer said on Monday.
Dink received a suspended three-month jail sentence in October for an
article about the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire,
which many countries recognise as genocide. An appeal was rejected
in July.
The European Union condemned Dink’s conviction at that point, and the
journalist "granted an interview to a foreign news agency on the 1915
events, in which he employed certain words," as his lawyer put it,
speaking to AFP.
If convicted again, the journalist will have to serve his original
sentence plus a possible three more years.
His lawyer Fethiye Cetin said the new proceedings had been sparked
when Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly that Dink edits,
reprinted excerpts from the July interview.
In the interview, Dink says of the World War I killings of Armenians:
"Of course I say this is a genocide, because the result itself
identifies what it is and gives it a name. You can see that a people
who have been living on these lands for four thousand years have
disappeared. This is self-explanatory."
Ankara refuses to apply the term genocide to the events. Earlier this
month it rejected a European Union report saying that it should do
so as a condition for joining the bloc.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted last week
that Article 301 of the Turksh penal code — which is the legal basis
for Dink’s indictment and for most proceedings against intellectuals
who speak out about the Armenian question — could be amended.
The EU has repeatedly warned Ankara that the prosecution of
intellectuals for exercising their right to free speech is damaging
Turkey’s membership bid.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
